Son's suicide freezes time for De Pere mom

Pam Cornelius sits in her son Alex's bedroom in their De Pere home on Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2014. Pam and her husband have left Alex's bedroom, where Alex committed suicide just before the first day of school in 2011, mostly unchanged.(Photo: Kyle Bursaw/Press-Gazette Medi)Buy Photo

DE PERE – Pam Cornelius pulls a neatly-folded T-shirt — the one her son wore for his last school photo — from a stack in a dresser drawer.

"Someone suggested making a quilt out of all of these," she said. "But I'm just not ready. People say I'm weird."

Alex Cornelius took his life in 2011, the night before his sophomore year would have started at De Pere High School.

He would have been a college freshman this year, but for his family, Alex will forever be 15.

"He never got a driver's license, he never graduated from high school," Pam Cornelius said. "My life stopped then."

The family copes by being active in the annual Be the Light Walk. Alex's dad, Erik, is organizing this year's event, set for Sept. 6. National Suicide Awareness Week is the following week, Sept. 7-13.

The work helps, but Pam says the pain will always be there.

She says she has been criticized — mostly by other parents who also lost children to suicide — for keeping Alex's room pretty much the way it was.

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(Photo: Kyle Bursaw/Press-Gazette Media)

Alex's room is in the finished basement of the family's quiet suburban home, so the door can be closed. The patterned bed quilt and sheets were washed. Shelves in the corner are loaded with books, and his artwork is displayed on the shelves and walls.

He signed everything A-Corn, a play on his name.

He did pastels, and lots of graphic art. His mother says you can see signs of a troubled mind in some of his art, a mock CD cover includes tears and sad babies, for example.

Alex was an avid reader who loved science fiction and horror stories, his mother said. James Patterson was a favorite author. He also was passionate about video games and hoped to design them some day — and his parents say he had the chops. He was great at graphic arts, had the creativity to write stories and knew all there was to know about video games.

Pam says her son had Asperger syndrome, which had been on the autism spectrum. Most kids with Asperger struggle socially, and Pam said her oldest of two sons didn't have a lot of friends. He often was afraid to talk to teachers, once not admitting he couldn't see what a teacher was writing on the board, but too afraid to speak up to ask to sit closer.

"He was a quiet kid," she said.

He often didn't want to attend class, but Pam said she didn't think she is smart enough to have home-schooled Alex. Things seemed like they were getting better.

The night before the first day of school,

The night before his first day of school, which started on Sept. 2, 2011, Alex finished his homework for an honors European history course he had been taking over the summer and seemed OK, Pam said.

"I did say, 'I wish we had started you on your medication sooner,'" she said about his medication for attention deficit disorder, which appeared to help him through his first year of high school.

"We knew he had anxiety about school, but we thought his freshman year was awesome."

Alex's dad told him to wear shorts to school the next day, and Pam said, "He never wore shorts, but it was going to be hot."

The next morning, Alex did not come up the stairs as he normally would. Pam went down to his room off the family's basement and discovered he had died of asphyxiation.

"We never, ever expected this," she said. "He seemed fine. He never said 'Goodbye.' He said 'Good night.' He went to bed fully never intending to go to school."

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(Photo: Kyle Bursaw/Press-Gazette Medi)

Her son left a suicide note on his iPod, with a Post-It note near the iPod telling the family about the note on the device. He was fully dressed — wearing shorts — when he died, Pam said.

The note said, in part, that he couldn't do another year of school. Police officers planned to take the note, as they usually do in situations like that, as it often hurts the family to read or hear what their loved one said. Pam knew one of the officers and persuaded him to let her keep the iPod.

"I always say we were so fortunate that he left a note," Pam said. "Many families do not get that. But you hope for the answers in those notes, and you might have a better understanding, but the 'why' is never there.

"I just wish we would have known sooner, that we could have done something."

Talking about it

Suicide makes Alex's loss different and difficult, his mother said.

"I still feel guilty. 'What if we would have started him on his medication earlier?' 'What if we had noticed something?'"

Others don't always know how to react. Despite some difficult conversations over the past few years, Pam says she wants to talk about Alex.

"I love talking about him, even if I cry."

Those conversations may help others.

"If I can help just one person, one parent or family or sibling, from having to go through this, then it is worth it," she said.

"If we could communicate to people who are suicidal that we understand you are hurting, but suicide is not the answer. You might think your family and other people would be better off without you, but that is so not true."

The Crisis Center run by Family Services of Northeastern Wisconsin handles about 300 different callers each month, and 200 people in person, who may be thinking about suicide, according to program director Tana Koss.

Over the past 10 years, 314 people have committed suicide in Brown County, according to the Crisis Center. Last year, 35 residents died by suicide, the highest number since 2009. Twenty have died by suicide so far this year. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for teens and children in Wisconsin.

Nationwide, someone commits suicide every 15 minutes.

Brown County has experienced an average of two teenage suicides each year since 2010, according to Koss.

Working-age men are the most likely to commit suicide, she said. Counties throughout the country, including Brown, are seeing an increase in suicides among professional, skilled workers, Koss said.

Families and friends who experience a suicide typically go through the anger, denial and sadness that comes with a death, she said. They also often feel guilty.

"They wonder what they could have done," Koss said.

Pam Cornelius said it's hard not to look for reasons. Some of Alex's friends and classmates suggested on Facebook that he killed himself because he was bullied, or because people didn't talk to him at school.

"I put a stop to that right away," Pam said. "I didn't want people pointing fingers or blaming anyone."

Profound loss

Last year was a difficult one for De Pere High School's graduating class. Those students had been Alex's classmates.

Alex died in 2011 and then, as seniors, they lost a classmate to suicide in January and another died a few weeks later.

The district co-sponsored a community event in the spring with Bellin Psychiatric Center, the De Pere Health Department and the Crisis Center to provide information and a forum for parents and others to ask questions or pose concerns.

Parents attending the event raised questions about signs of suicide, things they can do if they suspect a child is thinking of hurting themselves and which school officials should be contacted if students fear a peer may be thinking about suicide.

The district has made counselors available at the high school after each of the student deaths. It's also implementing wider use of a curriculum aimed at helping understand the signs of suicide. Special programming had been planned for last year's seniors, said Robert Lennon, director of pupil services for the De Pere School District.

"I feel bad for this class having to deal with this," said Pam, who didn't attend the graduation ceremony at De Pere High School this spring.

"I thought it should be a happy occasion. I didn't want to take the focus away from that, and I didn't think I could do it."

Alex had not decided where he wanted to attend college, but Pam said he wanted to be closer to home.

Many of his friends will be away at college for this year's Be the Light suicide awareness walk, but Pam is hoping some of them will come back. One will sing the National Anthem.

Pam says there was a part of her son that looked to his future. He gave up soda a few years earlier, lost weight and began reading food labels. After his death, Pam found a list of iTunes songs he wanted to buy and a list of books he planned to read.

"He died from depression," she said.

"If we would talk about it more, maybe people wouldn't be afraid they feel this way. It's OK to feel that way, just don't be afraid to talk about it. Talk to someone, there is help."

The Brown County Medical Examiner's Office and Brown County Suicide Coalitions are sponsoring an event on Oct. 7 at the Radisson Hotel and Conference Center in Ashwaubenon to help assist veterans, their families and service agencies by sharing information and connections. It's intended to help veterans learn about available services and for providers to learn about veterans' issues in Northeastern Wisconsin.